Sunday, April 26, 2009

Nadeem Paracha writes in Dawn that Pakistanis have been brainwashed into accepting a degenerated form of political Islam, which is not connected to their traditions.

Pakistanis eventually gobbled up a myopic and unthinking brand of Islamic logic. So much so, that today the overall intellectual faculties of critique in the society have been overpowered by loud discourses that are incapable of ever venturing outside from the top-of-the-mind clichés about religion that have been fed to us ever since the 1980s.

These clichés and notions were cleverly engineered into our system by years and years of misinformation on the subject. That’s why most Pakistanis today, both young and old, become like social time bombs, always going off the moment anyone dares question these notions.

(emphasis added)

The author continues:

To tackle and face it, we will have to liberate our minds from the concoctions we’ve been fed in the name of Political Islam and history. We need to become critical again, so we can escape the unfounded guilt many of us feel in responding rationally to anyone calling for the implantation of ‘divine laws’ and ‘holy writ’.

(emphasis added)

Indoctrination that produces guilt in the ones who challenge it is powerful stuff indeed.